Ryan Holiday: Let’s Make the News Up

Aaron Brabham: Welcome to another episode of Stansberry Radio. I’m Aaron Brabham. Porter is away on business trip, so I somehow managed to get James Altucher to cohost again. James, how you doing today?

 

James Altucher: Great, Aaron. I’m always excited to cohost here. Whenever Porter’s out of town, just give me a call and I’m ready to go.

 

Aaron Brabham: Well, we appreciate it, and I know our listeners do as well. We always receive rave reviews whenever you’re on. Today we’ll be interviewing Ryan Holiday. I know he’s one of your friends. Many of our listeners may not recognize the name, but anyone familiar with the Internet will know his work. James, tell us a little bit about Ryan.

 

James Altucher: Well, first off, Ryan is like eight years old. He’s like one of the youngest marketing experts I’ve ever met, and seriously he’s somewhere in his mid to young 20s, but he was the head of marketing for American Apparel when he was like 19 years old. He’s done all the marketing for Tucker Max’s books. I don’t know if you know tucker Max. He wrote –

 

Aaron Brabham: Of course.

 

James Altucher: – I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, which was a bestseller. Ryan’s done the marketing for Tim Ferriss’ books, who – you know, Tim Ferriss wrote The 4-Hour Work Week –

Aaron Brabham: 4-Hour Work Week, 4-Hour Body.

 

James Altucher: Yeah, then Robert Greene’s books, The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, The 50th Law, which he wrote with 50 Cent, so – and Ryan’s marketed my book, which was a bestseller, so Ryan’s a very good marketing expert. And his own book was a bestseller, and it’s called Trust Me, I'm Lying, and so I wanna ask Ryan about the role of honesty in marketing, because I’m not sure he believes his own title.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, I wanna ask him about the – he received some pretty harsh Amazon reviews. I’d like to ask him about that feedback as well to see what he thinks.

 

James Altucher: Oh, that’s interesting. I haven’t seen those. I’m gonna look them up right now.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, and you know what, pull up Amazon, and when you go to his book, literally the top four are just hate reviews with one star, and overall he has very high reviews. So, I’m curious to see what’s going on there, if it’s just jealousy, people attacking him, or if there’s anything justified or whatever. All right, James, let’s jump into it before we get to Ryan. You took a little bit of a sabbatical recently where you swore a vow of silence to your wife, Claudia.

 

James Altucher: Yes.

 

Aaron Brabham: How did that work out? How long did it last, and what was the purpose of it?

 

James Altucher: Well, I had launched a book, Choose Yourself! in June, and I’m a – I’m the type of person that likes to sit at home and work on the computer and write and read and just focus on what I’m doing. But, for about two months I was really out there marketing. Like I was doing lots of talks, lots of TV, lots of radio, lots of podcasts, and I really felt burnt out. I felt like I didn’t know what direction my brain was heading, so when your body tells you that, you need to take a step back. And so, I decided – we looked into a bunch of places.

We had decided on a good silent retreat, and we went for almost a week, and we basically were silent for that week. We weren’t even talking to each other. I just basically had a simple room with a bed and a desk and my Kindle, and that’s what I focused on most of the day, and what was interesting is that I realized you don’t really need most of the things that you carry around with you in your life. Like when I go home, I see I have all these books. I have a TV.

I have paintings. I have drapes on the windows, but in reality all I really needed was a Kindle, a computer and some changes of clothes and nothing else, and I would have been perfectly happy for the next six months like that.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, you know, my voice has been stressed lately, and I thought maybe there was something wrong with it, so I went to Johns Hopkins and had them look at it, and they said, “No, everything’s fine. You just need to chill out a little bit, quit yelling and quit getting so wild,” or whatever. So, I tried to practice this whole like being quiet thing, and I find that it sometimes makes me a little bit neurotic. Did you find it peaceful, or did you find it a little bit of anxiety or both? How did that translate into your mind?

 

James Altucher: Well, I found it very peaceful – in fact, so peaceful we scheduled another one for October. The average person speaks about 2,500 words a day, and I just wonder as an exercise if people try speaking half of that, like try speaking 1,200 words a day. You don’t have to go completely silent, but try speaking 1,200 words a day, and what ends up happening is you end up being an explorer more than a conqueror. Like look around you. You end up exploring more of just what’s around your house or what’s around the people who are around you?

Like you end up listening more. It’s an interesting exercise to try to just cut in half the words that come out of your mouth, and, again, I just recommend that as an experiment, not going completely silent, doing like a mini silent retreat with your day.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, something you’ve actually written about before as well, which is a very useful kind of life tool, is the less you talk, the more you listen.

 

James Altucher: Exactly, the more you listen – in fact, even one step further, the less you open your mouth, the less you eat –

 

Aaron Brabham: That’s true, too.

 

James Altucher: – so the more you listen and the less you eat. It’s just healthy all the way around.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, that is true, too. Yeah, I’m trying to figure out what my lesson is here, but my voice has been stressed for a couple of months, and it’s been –

 

James Altucher: Why do you think your voice has been stressed? Like when the doctor said you’ve been going wild, what are you going wild at?

 

Aaron Brabham: Man, I’m a single guy, and I get loose on the weekends, and here’s the thing, I’m the leader of the group. I believe what I have to say is way more interesting than what anyone else has to say. I probably talk 5,000 to 10,000 words a day when my voice is full power, so I’ve actually enjoyed kind of laying back, but it also is tough for me, because I have like, I guess, a lot of ADD. So, if I’m not in the mix of it, sometimes I just wanna just go home, because I’m like, “Ehh, what’s the point of adding to this?”

it’s been a kind of an interesting study for myself. They recommended I go get like a speech therapist and do lessons or whatever the case is, but I’m not really gonna do that, man.

 

James Altucher: But, I know the feeling also from being single, and you feel like you have to say things in order to show who you are, but sometimes when you don’t say things, that’s actually when you show who you really are. And when you listen to people – and, again, take this view that everything around you, you’re – almost like you’re an alien who just landed on the planet, so your goal here is to explore. That’s your mission is to explore new frontiers, and if you take that goal, you actually find that you learn more, you speak less and you become like a magnet. You attract people to you. It’s you become like the candle and the moth starts to fly around you.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, I totally agree. I do like having like a little bit of – becoming a stoic figure, someone that adds the mystery and intrigue, and the older I get, that’s kinda the character I’m becoming, because, look, man I know a lot about life now. I don’t need to dole this out to anybody else. It’s their journey. It’s their path. They need to make it happen. I do kind of like sitting on the sidelines a little bit. It’s a transition phase for me, let’s put it that way. It’s not something I’m enjoying so much, but I’m starting to appreciate it a lot more.

 

James Altucher: Well, one thing you can always tell yourself, and I find this to be useful, is you can never, ever change anyone’s opinion. So, let’s take an extremely polarizing issue like pro-life versus pro-choice. If someone is pro-life or if someone is pro-choice, no matter what you argue, you’re never going to change their opinion. If someone is for the war in Iraq as opposed to against the war in Iraq, you’re never, ever going to change their opinion.

All you’re gonna do is waste your vocal cords, so better to just sit and listen. They’ll dig their own holes if they want, or you can move away and not listen and just be happy being by yourself rather than being with someone you disagree with.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, that’s the beauty of being a libertarian, man. I try to do everything in my power to not tell anybody how to live their life. It’s up to them. It’s their life. All right, let’s jump into a little bit of headlines and commentary.

We’ve got one we can jump into before Ryan. So, more Americans are deciding to choose themselves by renouncing their U.S. citizenship. The Wall Street Journal had a write-up about this recently, so the numbers don’t look large. They’re still small, but more than 1,000 people in the second quarter of 2013 out of more than 6 million Americans estimated to be living abroad have basically said, “You know what, America? I’m out.” And it all comes down to taxes, so they put the FATCA Provisions in, and it was actually under the JOBS Act, which is, of course, one of these sneaky things that they do, right.

So, Obama creates this JOBS Act, and then they say, “Oh, let’s see how we can squeeze a little extra money out of people.” Anyone living overseas – which it doesn’t matter, the U.S. is getting their money, which is something that few, if any developed countries do. If you’re working and living permanently outside their country, they usually pay taxes in the country that they’re living, not the U.S. they’re getting theirs, so they put this FATCA Provision in that says, “If you have a foreign bank account, 30 percent needs to be withheld to the IRS, period.” Well, this is causing a big issue for regulation and banks overseas.

We talked to Jim Rogers recently, legendary investor. He had two banks call him and say, “Jim, can’t do business anymore. The U.S. is just way too complicated.” So, I’d like to get your thought on this. Is this something that you would consider doing if you were living overseas? What would you recommend?

 

James Altucher: Well, absolutely it’s getting more and more difficult to do business here in the United States, and this is a common theme of all of my investing and my life in general. So, I was talking to one very successful investor recently, and he just started a biotech company that’s already doing very well, and he will not go public in the United States. He just feels it’s too – the regulations are too oppressive. He can’t justify going public in the U.S. when he can go in public in many other countries.

Now, why can he go public in many other countries? It’s because now that we’re living in this global economy, countries, believe it or not, are starting to get less corrupt just at the same time as the U.S. is getting maybe even more corrupt. So, everything’s kinda equaling out, so you might as well do business in the countries where it’s more receptive and easier to go public to raise money, to pay less taxes, to have freedoms. The United States is a very good, safe country to live in.

I’m not going to say you shouldn’t live in the United States. In general, I feel very protected and safe living here, but if I were living abroad and doing business abroad and paying taxes abroad, I would certainly consider changing my citizenship. The regulations are so heavy here, this is why every company is firing their full-time employees and rehiring them as temp staffers, because even Fortune 500 companies have no clue how to handle all the new regulations with Obamacare and so on. It’s just too complicated, and you could go to jail if you don’t – as an HR person, you can actually go to jail if you don’t follow these regulations.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, it’s insanity, and we’re gonna jump into that in a little bit, but let’s go ahead and get to Ryan Holiday. I’m interested to hear what he has to say, and I’m looking forward to this interview. On the hotline we have our guest, Ryan Holiday. He is a bestselling author of Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. After dropping out of college at 19 to apprentice under Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, he went on to advise many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians. Ryan, welcome to Stansberry Radio.

 

Ryan Holiday: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

 

 

Aaron Brabham: I had to cut your bio short, by the way, because it’s just way too long. You’ve achieved way too much at this youthful age, but I wanna congratulate you for that.

 

Ryan Holiday: Thank you.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, so James, Ryan, how do you guys know each other?

 

James Altucher: Well, Ryan, I’ve known him for a while. I’ve known him ever since his book has come out, but he also helped me market my book, Choose Yourself!, which went on to become a bestseller, and Ryan did an excellent job understanding every kind of hidden corner of the Internet where one could do marketing, like things that – and I’ve been, of course, on the Internet forever, but Ryan knew every little aspect where all the buyers were, and that’s the important part.

 

Ryan Holiday: James isn’t giving himself enough credit. When I was deciding or thinking about writing my first book, I didn’t know James. I just sent him a random e-mail because I was a fan of his writing, and he gave me a bunch of amazing advice.

 

James Altucher: Really? I don’t even remember that.

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah.

 

James Altucher: That’s pretty cool. I’m glad I’m a good guy.

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, of course. You always forget the people – like you get these random e-mails, and you’re either nice or you’re a jerk or whatever, and then you meet those people in person and you’re like so relieved that you were nice.

 

James Altucher: Yeah, that’s very true. So, Ryan, I have a couple of questions, actually, about your book, if you don’t mind answering.

 

Ryan Holiday: Okay. Let’s do it.

 

James Altucher: So, you say Trust Me, I'm Lying, and then it even underlines it more, Confessions of a Media Manipulator, but I would argue that marketing and advertising forever has been about media manipulation. And just from my own experience with you, I sort of feel like the way you market is to bring out the authenticity in what you’re marketing more than any other advertiser or marketer I’ve worked with. How do you kind of – where do you see authenticity in marketing these days?

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, so I guess the title of the book is sort of a good example of that. If your book doesn’t catch people’s attention or whatever you’re doing doesn’t sort of catch people’s attention and almost like sort of punch them in the throat in this Internet attention economy that we live in, it sort of doesn’t matter about the rest of it, because you are not gonna – you’re not gonna win this fight against everyone else. And so, the book title has to be sensational. It had to be crazy. It had to catch your attention, but then when people actually see the book, I think they get that what I’m saying is that there’s this sort of system that’s operating by or this game that’s being played, and we all have to understand those rules.

 

We have to understand how the game is being played by the most ruthless of individuals out there, so then we can decide how we’re gonna play it ourselves. And I think with your book we saw that, too, which is you wrote a great book, but if you don’t go out there and do things that catch people’s attention, it’s gonna have a hard time competing against all these other inferior books that are willing to sort of engage in certain tactics and play certain games. And so, for me, what I do is I sort of break down what someone’s doing and I try to really seize on what’s the most compelling or provoking or unique part of a project, whether it’s a book or an article or a product, and then I try to exaggerate and emphasize only that part to give people the most exciting entry point into the thing. And then, once you get it, you find out that they’re a good person, that they’ve really thought about this, that it – there’s a lot of evidence behind it, all the good things that you need to actually make reading a book possible.

 

That’s sort of different in 2013 as to what will allow us to decide to give a book a chance or to pick it up. That’s where the sensationalism and the seizing attention has to come in.

 

James Altucher: Well, it’s interesting. I was reading I think on Seth Godin’s blog that there’s gonna be 15 million books self-published or not published this year, and up from 300,000 10 years ago. So, in this kind of day and age where I’m assuming the number of readers is not going up that much, how does a book stand out? Like what would your top three or four tips be for someone who needs to have an Internet product stand out?

 

Ryan Holiday: Well, and it’s not even just that the amount of readers isn’t going up. It’s that there’s also a bunch of other demands on their time. It’s not like 100 years ago where reading was essentially the only major form of entertainment or education. Like I can listen to a podcast now. I can watch a video.

I can go on Twitter. I can do all these things that for all intents and purposes are just as educational as reading a book, and they’re easier. So, it’s like if you wanna read a book, you’ve gotta give someone an overwhelming compulsion to do so, and that’s the job of not just a marketer, but also the author themselves. So, like when I talk to an author, I’m really – like I think we sat down and talked about this with your book, which is like, “All right, James, who is the audience for this book?” And I think your initial answer was like, “Like really smart people who like reading about stuff,” and you’re like, “No, that’s not a good enough answer.”

You have to really narrow down who this book is for and why, and then you have to craft a book around utterly overwhelming that need, and then that way when readers find it, they recommend it to other people and whatever.

 

So, I think that’s number one, which is actually making a book that people need and want. That’s the best marketing decision that you can make, and I know that seems simple, but a lot of people, they just go off and write whatever they feel like, and then they try to market it, and that’s a totally different equation.

 

James Altucher: Well, it’s interesting, because let’s say someone writes a good book and let’s say they write a book with a good audience in mind. I still found with your marketing, what was interesting was we didn’t really market the book. We sort of assumed that word of mouth would take care of that, but what you did was help me construct a series of events around the ideas of the book that would in turn at least get the book in people’s hands before they read it. And I found what you were really good at was kind of constructing these events around the ideas of the book rather than marketing the content of the book itself.

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, so that brings up a couple things for me, which is, one, when was the last time anyone bought a book because they read a book review? And I’m not talking about like an Amazon review. It’s like they saw a review in The New York Times and that’s why they bought a book. It’s never that. It’s always you heard someone talking about it, a friend told you to read it, you saw an article that it was mentioned in or that mentioned the book.

 

You sort of come to books much more indirectly now, so what I like to do I sort of construct this narrative, or how do we make this book a news story, not a news story about the book, but the book is sort of involved in the news? There’s actually a word for this. It’s called newsjacking, which is another great book that I suggest people read. It’s by David Meerman Scott. But, basically the idea is how can you – so, you wanna be in the news to get your book, right?

 

So, what the – what I realized is what’s the best way to be in the news? Let’s make the news up. And this is where my study is sort of the history of news, and an understanding of the economics of the news business, which I talk about in the book, I think really come in handy, is how can you do things that make the news that then when they say, “Author James Altucher,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah “author of this new book,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it’s like they have to write about your book because you did something that was newsworthy.

 

And so, it’s sort of constructing this narrative, and that relies on something – there’s actually a media theorist whose name is Daniel Boorstin, but he calls it the pseudo-event.

And it’s an event done for the sole purpose of making news, so like a press conference is a news event. A launch party is a news event. Leaking something to the media is a news event. You do need things –

 

James Altucher: Well, what – Ryan, what’s the craziest thing you’ve done to either market a book or a product or whatever? Like what’s the most extreme type of event you’ve done?

 

Ryan Holiday: I have done some very crazy things. I have faked lawsuits. I tried to name a Planned Parenthood clinic after one of my clients.

 

James Altucher: So, talk about that one.

 

Ryan Holiday: I saved – yeah, so one of my clients, he’s a controversial author. His name’s Tucker Max. He writes about sort of drinking and hooking up, so he thought it would be hilarious, a political discussion that’s sort of a big thing if we tried to name – if we tried to create the Tucker Max Planned Parenthood clinic in the middle of Texas of all places. We actually were willing to donate – we had sort of done the math. We were willing to donate up to a half a million dollars to make this happen, which is about what it takes to buy the naming rights to a Planned Parenthood clinic.

 

And sort of doing it somewhat anonymously, somewhat sort of explaining our attention, we got all the way up to a meeting with their CEO in Texas. He had a check on him. He was ready to do it. They cancelled at the last minute, and then that’s when we sort of leaked the details of the discussion to a blog. And it ended up doing millions of media impressions.

 

We didn’t have to spend the money. It became this big discussion because it’s actually an interesting story, right. Planned Parenthood, its funding is being attacked from every angle in Texas, and then here’s a controversial, if not very disliked, public figure who wants to give them money with some strings attached. Should they take it? And then, that becomes a discussion about the author’s work, about his comedy, about the politics.

If you want to generate a discussion, there’s probably not a more contentious issue than abortion, right, and we sort of dove right into that with the book, and that book debuted at Number 2 on The New York Times bestseller list the week it came out.

 

James Altucher: And that’s not – there’s no media manipulation there. Like you weren’t lying. You were willing to donate the money.

 

Ryan Holiday: Right. Well, that’s what I’m saying. It’s like I’m not saying you’re lying to a reporter or you’re holding their family hostage to get them to write about you. You’re doing something that is newsworthy, that you know reporters will turn into news by writing about it, and we did a version of the same thing with your book, for people who are familiar with James. James announced that he would accept bitcoin payments for his book, and he would be the first author to do so, which ended up getting covered everywhere from the daily news to Business Insider to TechCrunch, and, you know –

 

James Altucher: CNBC.

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, and how many people actually paid by bitcoin for your book?

 

James Altucher: Probably hardly any. Like not that many people own bitcoin, so maybe like 100.

 

Ryan Holiday: Right, but it – so, the news story was much bigger than the actual event itself _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ –

 

James Altucher: Right, because the preorders on Amazon, which is cash, went through the roof.

 

Ryan Holiday: Right, right. It was an excuse for people to talk about your book in a way that otherwise they wouldn’t want to because they would feel self-promotional. By doing something newsworthy, you’re giving the news a chance to talk about you, and a lot of my strategies are sort of rooted in that. It’s like how can we – you can call up The New York Times and say, “Hey, can you write about my book?” and they would say, “No,” or you could do something crazy and The New York Times would call you and say, “We wanna write a story about you. Can we?” And then, you would say, “Yes,” and that’s a fundamentally different way of doing the same thing.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, let me jump in here real fast. So, we had Robert Greene on our show when Mastery launched, and I’m a big fan of his, and I remember receiving an e-mail because I joined his list, and he’s giving away all these extra freebies and secret books and ebooks and all that type of stuff, and I just basically wrote back, “Hey, look, here’s our audience. We’re very libertarian-minded, open-minded. We’re big fans of yours. We believe history teaches people,” and he came on the show. That was great.

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah.

 

Aaron Brabham: Another time – see, I didn’t realize you were behind some of this stuff. Another one that stood out to me was The 4-Hour Body, and did you – you were part of that, right, or were you just 4-Hour Work Week?

 

Ryan Holiday: I advised on The 4-Hour Work Week and The 4-Hour Body, and then I did the launch for The 4-Hour Chef, which is his bigger book with Amazon.

 

Aaron Brabham: Sure, sure. So, I remember when The 4-Hour Body came out. I have an Internet marketing product myself, so I’m in a syndicate, and they sent around this kind of like reel of how everything kind of came together and how they reached out to partners and really made these big events that you’re talking about. And it struck me and it’s striking me again that it’s very easy to go out, create a product. I believe the best marketer wins in most products, period. There are many books –

 

Ryan Holiday: Sure.

 

Aaron Brabham: – out there that are way better than books that are bestsellers, but they don’t know how to find the right audience, so – but, what – I’m listening to you right now, and it sounds like there are great ways for people that wanna self-publish to create events, but not fabricate them, genuinely get interest by the media, create a buzz and still do it on a nothing to a small budget. Is that still – I mean, that’s true, right?

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, totally. I think what people don’t understand is that the supply side of the media has changed. So, okay, so you – 25 years ago, you have cable news, you have radio and you have newspaper. They have a finite amount of space that they can fill, and there’s a lot of people competing for that space, so it’s like if you get profiled in the Washington Post or you get on Fox News – or if Fox News exists – _____ – you get on the news, someone else lost out to you for that spot. There’s only so many spots, and – but, today, there’s not only far, far, far, far more media outlets, they all have done away with the idea of publishing constraints, so you guys could essentially create an infinite number of podcasts.

 

You could create an infinite number of blog posts, and there’s 100 other sites who might not have the same audience as you, but could have an equally large audience or a different audience that also has to create lots of content. So, there’s this sort of infinite demand for interesting things, and what people don’t understand is like they make a book or they make a product and then they just hope that their thing gets picked up instead of going, “Hey, I’ve got this thing that people actually want,” and by people I mean the media. If I can go out and actually do the heavy lifting in terms of telling them about it and making it clear that this is in their interest to talk about because it’ll give them another episode or give them another blog post, we’ll be scratching each other’s backs. And so, what I do with Robert and Tim and James and everyone that I work with is sort of understand that it’s not a buyer’s market anymore in terms of the media. It’s a seller’s market, so I’m not gonna go pitch the people who are still thinking it’s a buyer’s market, who think that they get to decide what’s newsworthy and what’s not.

 

I’m gonna go out to the people who have bigger audiences who want content, who are desperate for good stuff and then I help them create that. And it’s like you wanna have Robert Greene on your show, and if I think – if I remember correctly, you e-mailed him and were like, “Hey, I wanna have you on his show,” and I’m like, “Sure. Robert, you’ve gotta do this,” and that worked out great. Meanwhile, his publisher, who’s sort of still understanding the old economics, is out there begging a bunch of traditional radio podcasts – or radio shows to let Robert come on and spending a bunch of time, and then when Robert comes on, it doesn’t even generate the same kind of result.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, that’s right –

 

Ryan Holiday: And so, when people understand that there’s a shift, it’s actually very empowering.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, that’s right, because we wanted him, so we have passion behind our interview, right? It’s not –

 

Ryan Holiday: Right.

 

Aaron Brabham: It’s not a push. It was a pull on our part, so I think that’s a very important thing to note out there for people that are listening. You want the pull. You don’t want the push. If you’re exerting too much force trying to get it out there, you’re doing it all wrong. Porter always says in life, “If something seems too hard, you’re not doing it the right way, because life’s not intended to be that difficult.”

 

James Altucher: That’s really interesting, so –

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah.

 

James Altucher: – Ryan, let me ask you a question. What’s next for you? Are you gonna write another marketing book? What’s coming out soon?

 

Ryan Holiday: Yeah, so I’ve got two things in the works. So, I have an ebook coming out that’s sort of another book about marketing, sort of a – what I wanted to do is – I was thinking one day about all these companies – Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Airbnb – that sort of came out of nowhere within the last five to six years, and they built these billion-dollar brands. And then, I was thinking, it’s like, “Hey, who did their marketing?” and then you realize that no one did their marketing. They did their own marketing, and they built brands from nothing, essentially spending nothing to do so, and I wanted to sort of profile how that worked and what those strategies were.

 

There’s actually a name for their approach. It’s called growth hacking, which is basically – it’s like if you didn’t understand anything about traditional marketing, you never heard of a press release, you never heard of advertising, never done any of these things and you were sort of inventing the science from scratch, what would you do? And so, that’s what growth hacking is. Sort of anything that brings new people in the door is considered marketing, and so I have a short ebook about that that comes out actually in about three weeks, and then I have been working for the last year and a half on a very big book about adversity and stoicism, the Roman philosophy, and that will come out in 2014.

 

Aaron Brabham: Man, that’s awesome. I definitely will check those out, and I know your website is ryanholiday.net. I advise everybody to check that out. You’ve given me a great perspective on, you know, most people get focused on the content because they’re stuck in it. They believe people need it. That’s great, but it’s really about finding the avenues to create the buzz, to get the pull in order to get the push. Man, that’s valuable stuff.

 

Ryan Holiday: Thanks. It’s like if you spent a year of your life working on this thing, you’re not just gonna let it die in obscurity because you think it’s someone else’s job to make it a success. I think that’s the thing.

 

Aaron Brabham: That’s great. James, anything else for Ryan? I know he has better things to do than talk to us yahoos for a day.

 

James Altucher: I don’t think he does, actually. I think he could talk to us all day and be happy about it, but Ryan, I just actually preordered your next book, and I’m looking forward to the stoicism one as well.

 

Ryan Holiday: Thanks for having me. This was very cool.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, we appreciate it, and we’ll talk to you soon. Love to have you back on.

 

Ryan Holiday: All right, you got it.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, take care.

 

Ryan Holiday: Bye.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, James, very, very good interview. This ties in perfectly with all the things that you preach in Choose Yourself!, and this is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today on the show was we get a lot of feedback of listeners that have purchased your book. They’re writing their ten ideas a day. They’re coming up with all these really good ideas, and they’re stimulating their brain. They’re making their brain sweat, as you say, but they don’t know how to get their ideas out to the world, and I think he just cleared up a lot of these ideas.

 

James Altucher: Well, and I think part of it is – you know, like take my book as an example. It wasn’t just me writing this book and then, like Ryan says, hoping for the best. I put a lot of time and effort into it, so after that I wanted – I built essentially a small army to help me market the book, so Ryan was part of that. You guys, you know, you and Porter were infinitely helpful in me marketing this book, and that came about not because – it’s, again, how you described your Robert greene relationship. You guys pulled.

 

It wasn’t me kind of begging you to help me market the book. You legitimately liked the book and wanted to help, so that’s, I think, where Ryan’s coming from is he creates situations, too, where people hear about the book and then they can decide for themselves whether they want it. But, he’ll give them reasons to like it in advance, and I worked very hard on – not only with my book, but on any business that I’ve ever started or anything I’ve ever written, how do I get noticed? So, my very first business was a company that made websites for entertainment companies, so when I approached a utility company like Con Edison, why would they be interested in hiring my company? Well, I did Warner Bros. website, and I did the website for The Matrix, for miramax.com, sony.com and so on.

 

So, they were excited. They wanted to be involved in that type of story, so, again, it’s how you market yourself authentically that is very important. It’s also how you choose yourself with authenticity and honesty.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, I think that’s a very valuable point, because we don’t usually pitch – we don’t pitch that many books. We’ve never pitched a self-help book per se, and it was wildly successful, which shows us that our listening audience is not only interested in finance, but interested in improving themselves, which actually they do go hand in hand, because as you know, James, if you do the right things with your money and you put them to work for you, you can sleep a lot better at night.

 

James Altucher: Absolutely. People always ask me, “Oh, I have $10,000.00. what should I invest in?” The best investment where you’re gonna get more than 1,000 percent returns per year is in yourself. You’re never going to get that from a basket of Google, Apple, Disney, but if you invest in learning new things, building new products, starting a business, even if you fail the first 10 times, the 11th time, when you’re persistent and you work hard and you learn from all your mistakes, that’s when you’re gonna have returns of 10,000 percent, 100,000 percent.

And it’s always worth it to either have cash in the bank or invest in yourself. I almost never recommend any other type of investing.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, James, let’s get back to a couple of headlines out in the financial world. So, you’ve been writing about this for a long time, America is moving towards a part-time society. You mentioned it earlier, as a matter of fact. The latest July job numbers continue to confirm this long trend. Not only are the jobs being created part time, but they’re also growing in low-wage industries.

“Of the 162,000 jobs gained in July, 47,000 were in retail, another 38,000 in restaurants and bars, temp staffing firms, and home healthcare rounded out the top 4 sectors that made up 60 percent of the jobs added. This year these four sectors have accounted for 45 percent of the nation’s 1.3 million payroll additions.” Is there any way to turn this trend around, and if not, what advice can you provide to our listeners that are struggling to find stable income and save?

 

James Altucher: Well, there really is no way to turn this situation around, and this is both a good and a bad thing. So, globally what’s happening? Because of technology, companies are becoming more efficient. When you become more efficient, you don’t need to hire as many people. Also, a global economy makes it easier to communicate around the world and hire people who are in lower-paying countries.

So, the reality is, this is never gonna turn around, and if you try to turn it around with regulation, then it’s gonna backfire, because companies will have less profitability than their global competitors, and they’ll lose and go bankrupt, which is what happened essentially in the car industry, the airplane industry and so on. So, I’m seeing this every day. I’ve mentioned before, I’m on the board of directors of an almost billion revenues temp staffing company, so I’m seeing every day essentially the fortune 1000 is firing their full-time employees because they don’t wanna pay that much, and they’re hiring temp staffers or lower-paying employees. And I’ll just give you an example. I’m on the board, but – so, I can’t say anything private, but just today the company I’m on the board of, Corporate Resources – the stock symbol is CRRS – they just announced at 8:30 this morning that their last quarter they had 30 percent revenue growth.

 

So, here you have a situation where the economy is basically flat or growing 1 or 2 percent, but a temp staffing company is growing 30 percent, and they had their 4th consecutive quarter of profits, and I believe, I’m not sure, I believe it’s increasing profits. So, I don’t know what else to say. This trend is not going to stop, so I put my money where my mouth is. I went on the board and bought stock in this company that does temp staffing.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, okay. So, it’s not gonna stop. What are – and I know you’ve written about it in Choose Yourself!, but just for our listeners that haven’t read it or are just really kind of mentally defeated, what are a few things that they can do? One of them probably starts with daily practice, because you gotta change your mentality first and foremost.

 

James Altucher: Sure. We’ve been taught from childhood that if you go to college, get a house and get a job at a big corporation, you’re gonna be quote/unquote “safe.” You’ll be able to stay in that cubicle for the rest of your life and retire with a gold watch and a pension plan. Well, that’s not true anymore. None of that is true anymore, so I say you have to start, first off, by taking care of yourself, and that doesn’t mean being selfish. It means make sure you’re physically healthy.

 

Make sure you’re emotionally healthy, so that means being around people who inspire you and who you’re inspired by and people who love you and people who you love, mentally healthy, meaning come up with ideas every day, and spiritually healthy, so learning to cultivate a sense of gratitude and abundance all the time. And I have so many people who say to me, “Oh, I come up with ideas and then my friends put them down. What should I do?” well, very simple, get new friends. Have friends who know how to constructively support you or give constructive criticism or help you in some way or introduce you to other people or so on. You don’t wanna be around destructive people.

 

So, it sounds weird. Like everybody wants advice, like, “Oh, what business should I go in, or what sector, or how do I start a company?” But, the reality is, you have to take a full step back and every day make sure you’re taking care of your own self, and when that happens, the ideas will start to flow naturally. And the only reason I’m saying this is because I did it. Like I was dead broke, on the floor.

 

We’ve talked about it before. I was bankrupt and suicidal, and I had to say, “Look, I have a family to take care of. What am I going to do?” And this is what I did, and from scratch, from zero, with no network and no connections, I was able to build back up, start businesses, get involved with other businesses and make a lot of money. And I really can see from my readers six months of doing this, your life completely changes.

My life changes every six months without fail. It’s amazing how it works.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, James, let’s go to the next headline news topic. President Barack Obama just gave a speech saying that he wants to reform the housing market, pulling back on the government’s role as a primary backer of mortgages. The government currently backs about 90 percent of newly issued mortgages through Fannie, Freddie, the FHA and the VA. So, here’s the deal. Why does the government constantly pitch this idea of home ownership?

Is it for everyone? And I know you just released today a Facebook post that says, “You have to use this checklist when buying a house.” Let’s dive into that.

 

James Altucher: Right. Well, first off, why has the government always been a proponent of this? Most people don’t know the phrase “the American dream” was popularized in a Fannie Mae –

 

Aaron Brabham: It was Fannie Mae ad.

 

James Altucher: – marketing campaign.

 

Aaron Brabham: That’s right.

 

James Altucher: So, the whole concept of the American dream is wrapped up in this notion of home ownership, and the government has made an enormous amount of money by backing these loans. They make money on every single mortgage, so – but, lately, though, the government hasn’t been making as much money, and it’s caused the government a lot of problems ever since 2008. So, of course, Obama’s gonna back off on this, and the reality is, most people should not own homes. They’ve been manipulated into thinking that home ownership provides safety. What other reason why someone would fork over like almost their entire net worth as a down payment into a completely illiquid investment where they’re then gonna, for the rest of their lives, owe the bank money and they’re gonna have to clean their toilets, and they’re gonna have to go to Home Depot and all this crazy stuff.

 

Like a house is just never a good investment, in my opinion. Now, many people would disagree because they’ve already forked over all that money on a down payment, and so they have commitment bias, but if you add up the numbers, owning a home is much more stress, and it actually throws your money down the toilet as opposed to what people say about renting.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, a few points to this. So, I used to be a – I used to be in the mortgage industry, and I did loan origination as well as a wholesale account executive, and I would advise people all the time, “Look, don’t become home broke. Just because you can qualify doesn’t mean you should do it,” because as a previous homeowner that could barely scrape enough to make my mortgage payment, not including all the maintenance and the taxes, and forget about eating and having an entertainment fund, you don’t wanna be home broke, because once you’re stuck, you’re stuck. Now, what’s interesting is, you write the three D’s, and this would be a time to consider doing it, and they’re interesting.

 

If you love death, debt and divorce when it happens to others – because remember, it’s an investment. Talk about those three D’s as the time to consider doing it if you’re really hell-bent on doing it.

 

James Altucher: Sure. And this applies to all investing, because it’s really hard to predict the future. We’re notoriously bad at predicting the future. Most people think they can predict it a little bit, but the reality is, it’s extremely hard, and almost all your predictions won’t come true. So, you might as well make sure when you’re investing that you actually get a good deal right now, so you know you’re getting a good deal if every other house in your neighborhood that’s the same size is going for a half a million and you pay $300,000.00. Then you got a good deal. So, how do you get a good deal, because nobody’s just throwing out houses for $300,000.00 when every other house is $500,000.00.

you get a good deal when these three things occur. If someone dies and their kids don’t wanna deal with the hassle of the house, you’re going to get a good deal. If someone gets – if a couple gets divorced, they have to split up their assets, you’re going to get a good deal, because they usually have to split up those assets very quickly and they don’t have time to wait for a good buyer, so you’re gonna get a good deal. And if someone’s in a lot of debt, you’re gonna get a good deal. In fact, the whole housing industry has kind of been kick-started in the past few years because of foreclosures.

So, people got into too much debt. They got foreclosed, and then suddenly people started buying foreclosed houses, so, again, divorce, debt and death, you’re going to get a good deal on an investment, whether that’s a house or a laundromat or a stock or whatever. That’s how you invest money is when you get a deal. It’s not when you can predict the future very well. It’s when you get a good deal, and that’s how you get a good deal.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, James, let me get your thoughts on this. I’m not even sure if you saw the story, but I’m betting you did because you love tech. Elon Musk and a team of a dozen engineers from both Tesla and SpaceX have unveiled the hyperloop. Have you seen the Hyperloop?

 

James Altucher: Yeah, sure.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, so basically what the hyperloop is is it sits in like a tube system, kind of like what the bank would do whenever you send your money to the teller. It’s based on technology of the Tesla Model S. It’s a linear, electric induction motor that was actually developed originally by Nikola Tesla way, way back in the day. Well, he has this proposal to go from L.A. to San Francisco using the I-5 current corridor so you don’t have imminent domain or anything like that. He believes that he can get people and their cars even to travel 800 miles per hour.

 

It’ll take them, I don’t know, it was like 30 minutes or an hour to get from L.A. to San Francisco, and he believes it will cost $6 billion, and right now California has a proposal and is looking to get a high-speed rail system underway that will cost $70 billion. What’s your take on this, and do you think it’s feasible?

 

James Altucher: Well, I don’t know anything about the science, so it may or may not be feasible, but certainly worth a try. Like Elon Musk is a genius, clearly, with the – both Tesla and with SpaceX. He’s put a rocket into space, and he’s willing to risk it all. He was about to go practically bankrupt when finally he got a rocket into space and Tesla went public and so on. So, I think the guy is crazy in a good way, and he’s someone who’s definitely chosen himself.

 

He started PayPal. Then he’s gone on to Tesla. He really fleshes out his ideas. He’s extremely smart, so, look, why not instead of spending $70 billion, start off with the first six trying out this idea and seeing what you can use? It never can hurt. So, I’m all in favor of trying new things, and particularly with the type of person who is choosing themselves, they’re usually good people to trust.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, two more topics. Then we’re gonna get out of here. One of them is you posted this on your Facebook. I thought it was very interesting, because you posted – or was it Twitter or Facebook? I can’t remember which one it was. What’s your number? And basically what you were referring to was what’s the amount of money that you believe you need in order to retire comfortably?

 

James Altucher: Sure, yeah. And everybody has a different number, because it depends on, obviously, where they live and what they need, but what I’ve realized particularly as I’ve gotten a little older – and I’m not that old, but particularly as I’ve gone from my 20s to 30s to 40s that I really don’t need anything. Like I need a place to live and sleep. I need my Kindle so I can read books, and I need a computer so I can occasionally log on to the computer, and that’s about it. I don’t need fancy art.

 

I don’t need jets. I don’t even really like to travel that much, so when your expectations are really low, it’s very easy to exceed your expectations, and I’m in the business for myself of exceeding my own expectations. So, my number in particular is pretty low, but I think in general most people living the American lifestyle need between $5 and $10 million to retire safely and live their current lifestyle, which is – which I think is a bigger number than one actually needs. I think it’s very easy to actually exceed the number that you actually need.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, I’ll agree with that. Look, our Stansberry Radio listeners out there, that’s the goal of Stansberry Radio and Stansberry Research in and of itself is to safely and reliably find a way to achieve 12 to 15 percent a year, and if you can do that with the power of compounding, man, forget it. You need a lot lower number than you believe by far.

 

James Altucher: Yeah, and let me express that the goal is not – there’s all these fake goals. So, the goal is not to have more money than your neighbors. The goal is not to have fancy artwork. The goal is not to send your five children to college. The only goal is to have freedom for yourself to pursue the things you enjoy and to be around the people you love.

 

That’s the only real goal that you should have, and if you have that as a goal and you aim yourself towards that, then financial freedom – don’t forget, the words “financial freedom,” there’s the word “financial,” but most important there’s the word “freedom,” and that’s the important part. And you will be able to exceed what you need for freedom if you’re smart about it.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, my goal is to travel around the world several times and have a backpack and work on my laptop, so I am working towards that goal.

 

James Altucher: Yeah, and think about that. Then you don’t need to pay rent or –

 

Aaron Brabham: No.

 

James Altucher: – buy a house, so there’s Airbnbs that are cheap all over the world, or there’s hostels or whatever and life’s good.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, life couldn’t be better. All right, so last post I wanna talk about before we get out of here, and I know we have a lot of people that write in to us with ideas of starting businesses or whatever. You just wrote about this actually while on your silent retreat, five things entrepreneurs should never do, and you used a specific case. Of course, we’re not gonna name the person. I don’t even know who it is, but you had a friend that you were introducing to a billion-dollar company, and you felt like there was a really strong idea there, but five things kind of went wrong. And these are good lessons for entrepreneurs that don’t have money, that really are starving to get their product out. Let’s talk about these.

 

James Altucher: Right. So, I think the main thing, and this is very important, if you have a huge opportunity, make sure you (a) do what you’re – say you’re going to do. It’s so simple, and yet most businesses don’t do it. Most businesses have a product and they think that every client should love their product, but the reality is, in 99.999 percent of the cases what your initial product is has nothing to do with how your business will eventually look. So, always cater to the needs of the customer. Not saying the customer is always right.

 

That saying is always right, so don’t be late, do what the customer wants, and when you can, over-deliver. So, you should always do what the customer wants, the very – the specific spec, but your – if you know your industry and if you are even mildly intelligent, you’re always gonna be able to over-deliver and surprise the customer. And the customer is gonna say, “Wow, they actually did this for me. It’s like this free benefit,” and the customer is gonna come back to you as opposed to all of your competition. This has worked for me in every business I’ve been involved in.

 

I’ve only succeeded at businesses where I’ve consistently over-delivered, and it’s amazing to me how many businesses don’t over-deliver. In fact, some businesses actively say, “If you start to over-deliver, then you’re gonna raise the expectations of your clients too high and they’ll always want you to over-deliver.” I haven’t found that to be true. My main thing is, keep the customer happy. You don’t wanna be just a vendor for your customer.

You wanna be a partner for your customer. You wanna know their industry better than they know their industry so that it becomes easy for you to over-deliver, so you can start to manage their expectations in various ways. Some ways you’ll manage them down. Some ways you’ll manage them up, but when you become their partner, they’re gonna trust you, and they’re always gonna rehire you. And here I gave an opportunity to a guy who’s an expert in the industry.

 

He could have easily over-delivered and blown the customer away. He chose not to. Instead he was chasing venture capitalists. Venture capitalists are useless to the long run of your company. Much better the cheapest money your company can ever have is actual revenues and profits, and you get that by satisfying a billion revenue customer. I can’t emphasize that enough.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, vulture capitalists. If you want to sink your business and give away all your equity, go to them, because they will gladly do that for you.

 

James Altucher: Yeah, and let me just say, I’ve sold three different businesses in three different industries, and in every single case I did not raise a single dime of money. I completely funded the business out of profits. Whenever I’ve raised money for a business, that – those businesses have been failures.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, that’s a good lesson. You gotta learn the skill of sales. There’s nothing more important than that. You’re selling all the time. People that are averse to it don’t understand the concept of it. Nothing would ever, ever, ever be sold if there wasn’t some kind of marketing or sales behind it.

 

James Altucher: Right, and one way in which – the most effective selling technique is to simply deliver on time and to over-deliver, very simple to do.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yes, absolutely. Well, I wanna encourage all of our listeners to e-mail us and ask James any question, because I know that he’s gonna be a regular with Stansberry Radio. We’re very excited about that. You can e-mail us at [email protected], [email protected] Also, you can call our hotline.

That’s 855-SARadio, 855-727-2346. We’d love to hear some voicemails. We’ll play them next time. James is on as a cohost, and James, I have some business coming up down in south Florida, and it so happens when you’re gonna be down with Claudia, and I understand you have a Ping-Pong table. I can feel a rematch coming. The champ is gonna give both of you a shot at the title again.

 

James Altucher: We’re getting ready. We’re gonna hire a coach to help us out for a day or two before you arrive, so I hope you’re staying in practice yourself.

 

Aaron Brabham: Well, wait a second, can I get in on this coach, too? I’m happy to chip in for the coach. I mean, come on.

 

James Altucher: No, way. We’re getting a coach so we can beat you.

 

Aaron Brabham: Well –

 

James Altucher: That’s the reason for the coach.

 

Aaron Brabham: – I mean, come on now. Now I’m gonna have to go seek out a Ping-Pong coach. Anyone out there that’s a Ping-Pong coach that can give me some tips, please, [email protected] I have to retain the championship Stansberry Radio Ping-Pong belt, so we gotta make that happen. All right, James, any parting thoughts for our listeners before we sign off?

 

James Altucher: Yeah, I just wanna encourage people that if you feel – often people feel overwhelmed by ideas. They feel stressed out. They feel stuck in their lives, and they don’t know what to do next. Always take that step back, and this is what we started talking about in the very beginning of the hour, always take a step back and try to quiet down all of those thoughts of anxiety or regret and just listen to what’s really happening inside of you. And you’ll find that there’s actually a lot happening inside of you that you weren’t listening to, and it’s important to be – to find those moments of quiet when you can.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, James, well, we appreciate it, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks in south Florida.

 

James Altucher: Yes, thanks, Aaron. Thanks for having me on the show.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, take care, bye.